The Siege of Hydra Cordatus

Deep in the Segmentum Obscurus lay Hydra Cordatus, a fortress-world guarding a secret Adeptus Mechanicus facility and a precious hoard of Space Marine gene-seed. It was to this hidden bastion that the Iron Warriors came, drawn by their eternal, obsessive hunger for the breaching of walls. The Siege of Hydra Cordatus would become a masterclass in the grim art these traitors had perfected across ten thousand years.

The Warsmith Honsou and his grand company of Chaos Space Marines descended upon the world's defences, ringing the great citadel with trench-lines, artillery and slave-labour dug from the conquered populace. The Imperial defenders, drawn from the Astra Militarum, held the walls with grim tenacity, but against the Iron Warriors' methodical mastery of siegecraft, their doom was written from the first shell.

Wall by wall, bastion by bastion, the fortress was reduced, its defenders ground into the mud beneath the relentless bombardment. When at last the citadel fell, the Iron Warriors claimed the gene-seed within, a treasure that would fuel dark ambitions for years to come. Hydra Cordatus was left broken and looted, a monument to the truth that no wall, however mighty, could stand forever against those born to tear them down.